World War III

Who knew that World War Three was going to start
with the 2014 Russian reclamation of The Crimea
from modern Ukraine, a mere 70 years after
Russians reclaimed all Ukraine from Nazi Germany
who invaded Ukraine between 1941- 1944.
Russia got their third bite at Ukraine from 2022,
where they propaganda/excuse became that they
were seeking to de-Nazify Ukraine as if they had failed
to de-Nazify Ukraine before and had to hide their failure.

Presently the third world war is being extended as a cyber war
over European air space, and airport control, where drones
are making the skies unsafe, for planes to the degree
where the public's plans for peacetime travel are being increasingly disrupted.

How Anonymous Can Authority Get ?

'Who's image is on the coin*?'
is an increasingly unanswerable question,
for ascertaining who is in actual authority,
when over seventy years, money has gone
from paper and coins, through to cheques
and then credit cards through to being an app
that now stands in for all that stood before it
in situations that are so far beyond counting
that we hardly know who is in authority
at all, never mind where our taxes go.

*Jesus answer to the trick question
about who to pay taxes to in Israel
when it was a Roman province,
Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:19-26.  

When The Hand Connects...

    ...to the mouth that is hungry for food,
for the belly further down to grumble less, 
then that meal saves the day that day, at least.

There are many days when provision for the least
is yet more poverty, when want is left unmet. 
Whilst across a world, wars fill the news
that is self supporting from advertising
where wealth increases by unearned means,
whilst hiding from taxation, via schemes
out of reach of government regulations.

Where the hand connects to the mouth
I am grateful, but I have to learn to live
with feeling that I must live un-listened to.

The Vanity Of Optimism

works best when the optimist
is at their least reflective,
when they are at their vainest,
and their most deceptive
in such a flattering media. 

1939 Syndrome

I used to measure my happiness
by the length of time I was at ease
with listening to the serious news
in the mornings, the worse the events
reported and the more smarmy
the 'strong man' political acts
the shorter my tolerance of them.

Particularly Margaret Thatcher.
Nowadays I think of this measure
of un/happiness as '1939 syndrome',
since that is what such news reminds me of. 

Great Turn Offs Of Our Time (41)

When we hear the latest outlandish
public statement from public figures
known for their way with monetising
their lack of vigour towards the truth,
and making lies sound so entertaining
then the obvious thing to do is turn them off.

But when life repeats itself that often,
and that objectionably, what are we left with? 

The Discomfort Zone

Many times in public places I hear exhortations
that we should 'get out of our comfort zones'
by creating acts of faith and public positivity
that will 'change the world'. But the zone I live in
is one where I never quite know how to speak
with confidence, it is a zone of discomfort,
where I can speak but positive words fail me.  

Pressing Times

The difference between the politician
who thoughtfully leads his cabinet
using policies, and the leader who leads
his followers by how credulous they are
is that the latter is blind to the folly
of making the leader the whole story,
and even more blind to how the opposition
would oppose him with greater civility
if they could oppose his policies,
rather than aiming at a thin skinned person.

Whereas the policy takes the lead 
different arguments can follow,
and the press can explain why
whoever is wrong is that way.

Between The Once Real And The Utterly Ghostly

Nowadays I don't make new friends,
I merely remain civil and polite
when I am offered good services
in shops, and on the buses I go on
using my retirees bus pass, where I
wonder why mothers encourage
their children to call me 'Mister'.

The upside is that I am now cured
of imitations of friendships, online,
a place that feels to me like it is
an abandoned shopping centre
where ghosts of former real people
meet together to forget who they were.

Pick Your Non-Fights Carefully

It is an old axiom to said that
'nature is red in tooth and claw',
where humans who think they are
above their animal origins invent
competitive origins for themselves.
There the strength of the weak is seen
in their ability to get out of the way
of those whose sense of their strength 
outweighs their sense of reason.

The actions of the weak, in retreat,
are in self defence more than mercy
but their acts are as near to mutuality
as humans get whilst seeking forgiveness.   
 

When Laughter Is The Only Medicine....

We don't have to be falsely mistrustful,
or hold significant temporal power,
or even own hotels on which we refuse
to honour our creditors, to be thin skinned
to the point of paranoia with a media
whose remit is to point out the foibles
of the rich and famous, with humour.

There the poor, who have to have
thicker skins, whatever the colour,
to withstand their relative poverty,
and laugh at the absurd behaviour
of those living on absurd levels of wealth
that they know they are not going to enjoy any other way. 

'What Has He Done Now?'

Is a phrase that used to rattle round my head
every time I rang my mother far from home
as an adult, where the 'He' became 'You',
as if I had done the wrong thing yet again,
and unfailingly I had to report my error
to Mother before anyone else did.

Only nowadays I no longer ring Mother,
and I watch too much bad news on Youtube
where he who unfailingly does wrong, 
and politically he has two right feet
and knows unfailingly where they don't fit
before attempting to put them there....

The End Of The Silly Season

In a world of aggressive social commentary
Charlie Kirk stood out for his cogence.
His imitation of empathy made it's point.

But to me political punditry has engage
through light and shade - as if it were comedy.
Where the more a comment unfunnily 'punches down',
and blames the weak for being weak, the more
inclusivity is required to make the message palatable.

Charlie Kirk never saw any need to stop himself
from being part of the new anger in his society.
He never had the time for lighter moments, for laughter.

Now, with his humourless anger prompting his death,
he has shortened 'the silly season' in the news cycle*
and removed all the ease in how we see each other:
where we no longer know what being humane is for.

*Normally July and August are a slack time in the news.  

How Other People See Us

People will compartmentalise their lives,
to project what seems to be acceptable
and agreeable between who knows who,
and what they know each other for.
This seems fine at the time it is done:
we have to simplify the complexities
of being human, and how we make trust work,
into what seems like mutual self interest.

So far so partial, and when omniscience
is such a human impossibility why not stop
where what we know about each other
comforts us? It could well be masochism
to add fear to how we see each other.

For practical reasons we have to forgive and forget,
revise who we were, knowing that who we are now
is all there is to know, and other people know this.

Any Side Of Life

That answers back, replies to our questions
about itself is the brighter side of life.
It is when we ask and get no answer back
for our enquiry that we have to test
what it means to live in a darkness,
the depth of which we have to measure.

Housework Not Leadership

The more I see American news via You-tube
the more I am exposed to a commentariat
that chooses headlines that are on an axis,
very different from the comments the speaker
has to share, and that says nothing of the product
that the speaker is paid to endorse, to keep them on air.
Where household product X or Y matters more
than the given reason for the speaker to be there.

Perhaps I should stick to the household products
that pay for the commentariat, and avoid asking
what the powers that be have to share, via the messenger
who expands on what the leader denies in person. 
    

The Stuff Of Life

The four stages of modern life are...
wanting stuff, aided by advertising,
accumulating stuff, aided by debt,
attempting to get rid of stuff,
aided by the many upcycling sites,
only for you to find what you seek to sell
is worth a lot less than you bought it for:
your enthusiasm was what made you
buy it, and that has diminished over time.
 

Have You Heard About The Man

 who mistook misanthropy for philanthropy
as if equal-opportunities hatred was equality?
I have seen him, his insecurity is costing
everywhere he visits far more, financially,
then any gift he makes a show of to his hosts.

He as a deep state insecurity all unto himself.

The United States Of Violence

Andrew Jackson was the seventh president
of the USA and the first to endure an attempt
at assassinating him, in 1835. Both the pistols
cocked, loaded and aimed against him jammed,
his would-be assassin long outlived Jackson
mostly by his being certified guilty-but-insane.

Later in 1856 on the floor of the House of Representatives
Preston Smith-Brooks beat Charles Sumner to a bloody pulp
for what Sumner said and for Sumner being anti-slavery.
The beating by Smith-Brooks got Brooks the most cursory
of punishments. When he resigned his voters re-elected him.

This was the precursor to the American Civil War,
followed by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

So in this age of rhetoric that is so inflamed that it feeds on itself,
where that rhetoric has to be exported as far round the world as the USA
can label as 'free (to be violent)' expect American history to repeat itself.
And when there are violent assassinations, expect rhetoric, not honesty.

Happy Ninetieth Birthday

                        Arvo Pärt, Estonian Minimalist composer

and convert from Lutheranism to Orthodox 
in 1972. From 2011 to 2018 he was officially  
the worlds most performed living composer,
being made second most performed living composer
more recently to film score composer John Williams.

His most recent composition is 'Für Jan van Eyck' 
for choir and organ (2020) hear it here. 
 

 

The Deceptive Peace

The period from 1945 to 1991 seems like long ago
-but compared with many possible pasts it is recent.
For many in the most developed countries it was a time
of unparalleled wealth, peace, and social diversity,
which promised the offer of much more to come. 

But with the end of the cold war
the reverse has become the norm
-more victims of more wars 
than we know how to count. 

The period from 1991 - 2025 has, so far,
disestablished the relative peace
that went before it more profoundly
than anyone could have predicted,
bringing the world back to the question

Which do we want most? A deceptive peace?
Or a more brutal, but honestly fought, war?
and who should it be fought against? 

Overcoming Wealth Through Hard Work

Diogenes was asked, "Tell me, to what do you attribute your great poverty?" "Hard work," he replied. "And what advice can you offer the rich?" "Avoid all the good things in life." "Why?" "Because money costs too much. A rich man is far poorer than a poor man." "How can that be?" "Because poverty is the only thing money can't buy.".

Hilary Mantel On Royalty

'I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn't have the difficulty in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and are ill adapted to the modern environment. But aren't they interesting? Aren't they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everyone stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it is still a cage.'.

A paragraph from the 2013 essay 'Royal Bodies From Anne Boleyn to Kate Middleton', one of twenty essays in the book 'Mantel Pieces, Royal Bodies and other writings from the London Review of Books', writing as it should be in my opinion-trenchant and very well edited.   

Sponsored Entertainment Is Nothing New

I recently learned why the medieval mystery plays
were so named: there was no mystery in the stories.
In a Christian society Jesus was the only story.
The mystery was who paid for the actors, the scripts,
the rehearsals, and the staging of the performance. 

The clues to the mysteries lay in the jokes
that peppered the script with local character
which might have pointed to carpentry, nail making,
and many other skills, where what the jokes
were about told the audience who paid for it all:
which guild of craftsmen who kept secret
how their craft worked had paid for the entertainment.

Product placement, in scripts, is older than we think.   

A Choice Of Pointlessness

I remember when reading was disbelieving,
when the red top press made every day the same.

I remember when it was not worth asking
how many trees were felled to print
what would be forgotten the following day
where the paper the news was printed on
would be used to light fires, be recycled,
or left in forgotten spaces, to slowly rot away.

Now with the news being digital, and no more
self improving in character than it was before
the same staleness pervades, and bores me faster.

Only now entire landscapes are being left
poisoned and bereft of life, so that the latest
great leader in the denial of the obvious
can make their stand against the future,
where they are going to get most out of it, forever.

I'd be more amused if future pointlessness
in leadership was made to be as sustainable
as it was in the past, in days of newsprint,
when the tabloid press reigned supreme.

,
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Roll With The Humour

Whether the jokes we share
'punch up', or 'punches down',
depends on our choice of target,
and our sense of self importance.

But what we cannot escape is how
the humour can reverse in direction 
when beyond our means of resisting
others recast us as the subject, instead of the teller.

In the end time will make fools of us all. 

Are Friends Electric?

One of  the more frivolous
Summer non-news stories
that took up more space in the media
than was worth the time it took to absorb
was about people who talk to Chat GTP
and think of it as if it were their friend.

I don't particularly spend time imagining
who reads these blogs, nor do I see my writing
as anyone else's friend: I write for myself
where to share what I write is to let go of it, 

Whether your friend is digital or you don't need help
to talk to yourself enjoy it and remember that talk to ourselves
is cheap enough to not require the intrusion of 'supportive' adverts.   

When Dark Days Require Darker Satires

In these days black ops politics
where virtue of intent is always relative,
and so many moves hide dark motives
and unresolvable circular thinking,
so the commentaries on politics
have, of necessity, to become darker.

I drew comfort from the latest I heard
in my favourite broadsheet newspaper,
where the headline is 'Like a cockroach
in the nuclear winter, the return of....  ',
where the winter is forever ours to share.    

For A Longer Deader Life....

I have been loathe to explore
the potential powers of dictatorships
as they explore dystopian science,
and medical ethics. But my mind
was alerted to the potential for both,
in combination, when I heard reports
from the renewed cold war/axis of evil,
Xi, Putin, and Kim Jong-un. Casually,
where they talked among themselves
about how animal to human organ transplants
were the way to extend human life to 150 years length.

When they talked about how the patients
on which transplants had been tested so far
had to be brain dead, for the safety of the process,
they were no longer talking about medical science
but their long term replacement theory for democracy,
as they each thought how to extend their rule to infinity. 

  

Picture Set Of The Month - September - Watercolours By Andrew Wyeth

'Daytime at the Kuerners' by American painter
 Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009). 

'Beech Tree' as painted in 1934 by American painter
Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009).

'Tea for Two (study)', as painted in 1989
by American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009).

'Maplejuice Cove' as painted in 1942
by American painter Andrew Wyeth (1917 - 2009).